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[AceSV]

So like most of you, I wouldn't want a DF where magic is a part of everyday life, but I would like the idea of adding Gandalf and Saruman (nah, who am I kidding, Skeletor and The Sorceress) type characters to the legions of Fun.  The easy way to mod in sorcerers would be to make them Megabeasts with various breath attacks.  But it would be cool if some of these sorcerers stayed around your fortress and helped you out, which got me to thinking, would it be possible to make any Megabeast friendly?  Once in a while you could get 70s Godzilla instead of 2000s Godzilla showing up at your doorstep. 

For bad sorcerers, I think they would work exactly like a necromancer, showing up in a tower and creating armies of things that are not zombies.  Saruman had Uruk-hai, Skeletor had Robot Knights and a monster of the week. 

I have no idea how to touch the necromancer raws nor any idea where some of the Megabeast tokens are.  But other than that, it sounds easy enough. 

[ShinQuickMan]

Well, for friendly (semi) Megabeasts, you could add the [POWER] tag and hope they take over a friendly human civ in worldgen. That's really the only way to get a non-hostile Megabeast short of taming them.

As for the sorcerers you've described, you really don't need a new creature at all save for descriptive purposes. It's just a matter of having a SECRET interaction which grants a bunch of other interactions and other goodies. Those evil sorcerers would need a raise corpse-like interaction to revive and transform creatures into the specified minion you want and/or build towers, and would have to be immortal so their servants don't kill them as soon as they show up post world-gen.

Oh, and for these guys to be exclusive, they should not be able to teach or pass on their secrets to others, though there are ways to let them "teach" others part of the secret without gifting them their most powerful or even entirely related features; you can, for instance, have a sorcerer "teach" a prospective student part of the secret, only to have the student transform into some huge monster that serves as the sorcerer's henchman from then on, all-the-while leaving the sorcerer untouched by this transformation. However, for this specific purpose, you might indeed be required to have a few unique creatures so part of the interaction only/doesn't affect the sorcerer.

So yep, it's doable.

[AceSV]

Would a power to create minions have to aimed at creatures?  For example, could Skeletor point his wand at a pile of iron bars and turn them into iron golems?  Or better, could a rockmancer point at a boulder lying around your fortress and turn it into a (type of rock) golem?  Gabbro golem, Schist golem, Conglomerate golem, etc. 

[Putnam]

Would a power to create minions have to aimed at creatures?  For example, could Skeletor point his wand at a pile of iron bars and turn them into iron golems?  Or better, could a rockmancer point at a boulder lying around your fortress and turn it into a (type of rock) golem?  Gabbro golem, Schist golem, Conglomerate golem, etc. 

no

[vjmdhzgr]

Would a power to create minions have to aimed at creatures?  For example, could Skeletor point his wand at a pile of iron bars and turn them into iron golems?  Or better, could a rockmancer point at a boulder lying around your fortress and turn it into a (type of rock) golem?  Gabbro golem, Schist golem, Conglomerate golem, etc. 

no

There's several questions there, saying no to all of them is contradictory. Anyway, I'm pretty sure you mean no to the questions other than the first one, as you can't target items with syndromes or transformations or anything. The best you could do is a workshop reaction using one of those items as a material that either uses dfhack or transforms the wizard into a creature which has a limb melt off that the creature then reanimates and then transforms into the creature you want summoned, and transforms back into itself. Which, considering you want these to just turn stone into golems while attacking you, obviously won't work.

[Putnam]

I somehow thought that most of the questions were elaborations on the first one, not contradicting it.

[AceSV]

I assumed that "No" meant "No, what you want is not possible" 

Actually I've found The Spellbook, so I'll try a few of their recipes and see what I can make it do. 

[AceSV]

Okay, I'm unclear about this.  If you use a transformation syndrome, is the transformation permanent or does it end when the syndrome ends?  I'm thinking a sorcerer might change himself into a bronze colossus or transform hapless dwarves into frogs.  Would the sorcerer go back to being a sorcerer and would he still be able to cast his spells as a bronze colossus?  Would unlucky Urist be permanently frogged? 

[Putnam]

It ends when the transformation ends. The transformation is a syndrome effect with a START and END like any other. Interactions gained through syndrome are kept through body transformations.

[vjmdhzgr]

It ends when the transformation ends. The transformation is a syndrome effect with a START and END like any other. Interactions gained through syndrome are kept through body transformations.

But if there's a secret that transforms the learner into a sorcerer that then gets the abilities, including an ability to transform into something else they would lose them on transformation right? I think there are other problems with that though. Like world generation, and I think there was some weird thing with transformations where you couldn't transform while already transformed, but I also remember a guide on how to transform in a way that allowed further transformation so that might not be a concern.

[Putnam]

You cannot transform while already transformed, yeah. Transformation while allowing further transformation is done by transforming, killing then resurrecting the unit IIRC.

[Spiderking50]

There's a wonderful mod called Spellcraft on the DFFD which adds several types of spell casters to the game. Some of which are born naturally to the races dwarves while others gain their powers from !!divine!! sources. I haven't looked at it in a while, so I'm not sure if its up to date. Its a great place if you want to do spell casters.

Similarly I made a small mod called Rise of the False Gods a few versions ago that had megabeasts and semi-mega beasts taking over civs right and left. Thats one way to get friendly megabeasts. I also thought that at one point titans from good regions we're also friendly, but I could be wrong on that.

[golemgunk]

I also thought that at one point titans from good regions we're also friendly, but I could be wrong on that.

There's a description that can show up in the random megabeasts, "exudes an aura of kindness" or something. That doesn't actually mean anything right now though, they're just as hostile.

[Dirst]

A secret does not have to include a raise-dead interaction, but as far as I've seen the raise-dead interaction is a prerequisite for building a tower, taking on apprentices, or conducting sieges.  It doesn't matter what Sphere is associated with the secret, you still need to raise dead to establish a tower.

So you can build a secret interaction without the ability to animate corpses, and a deity will make an artifact that reveals the secret to a worshiper.  That worshiper won't build a tower or anything, but he/she will store the artifact and in principle someone else could come along and read it.

The only time I've ever seen one person teach such a secret to another person was a case in which the teacher happened to also be a necromancer.  A tower seems to be necessary for passing on knowledge.

The wiki says that the only people who will seek out secrets in worldgen are those with the goal of IMMORTALITY.  Does anyone know if that has been fixed?  (This explains why my custom secret ended up in the hands of a necromancer...)

[Spiderking50]

There was once a discussion about the actual need to raise the dead. Someone argued that minions of other sorts counted, but I don't remember much about it. Either way, minions are required, might have to be dead ones, might not.

In vanilla there are very few slabs made right now, and very few secrets to be learned as a result. However if you add all the research tags to a secret, it becomes much much more prominent. It also helps to add some powerful abilities for killing everything in a 16x16 area creating undead.

Here's that mod I mentioned earlier. I haven't looked at this version yet, but was a very good resource when I was doing !!interaction!! science.
http://dffd.bay12games.com/file.php?id=6378